Does a shift to subscription mean better ERP?

By: Dennis Howlett

I’ve been scratching my head over Forrester’s The State of ERP in 2011: Customers Have More Options in Spite of Market Consolidation report. Larry Dignan focuses on the key finding that:

The enterprise resource planning (ERP) market is heating up in 2011, but despite more on-demand offerings from SAP and Oracle’s Fusion upgrades, two-thirds of companies say they will stick with the status quo for their business applications.

There are problems with Forrester’s analysis from both a buyer and seller perspective. Simply shifting from one business model (license plus maintenance to subscriptions) does not sound like any fundamental change in the market. In fact the more one reads the report, the more it sounds like ’same old, same old.’ That’s curious in a market where the leading vendors tout ‘innovation’ as their current watchword.

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